


Literate and Stylish, Kissable and Quiet

by prairiegrass



Category: Silicon Valley (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-11
Updated: 2018-03-11
Packaged: 2019-03-29 23:48:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13938042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prairiegrass/pseuds/prairiegrass
Summary: Jared's soft, impossible sensuality is driving Richard bonkers.





	Literate and Stylish, Kissable and Quiet

Another late night. Long past what would be reasonable working hours for any typical job, but those norms don't seem to apply in the world of Silicon Valley startups. The room is dim but for a bright rectangle of light glowing on each man clacking away at his keyboard.

Richard pauses in his work quite abruptly, a pained expression twisting his features. He turns over one wrist to rub its underside with his thumb.

Jared, adjacent to him, notices the twinge and the self-soothing, and immediately springs to his aid.

“Are you feeling symptoms of carpal tunnel syndrome, Richard? Maybe it would be helpful if you regularly did a few wrist exercises. Would you like me to show you some that I was taught?”

“Oh, uh, sure,” Richard agrees. “I think I need a break from this fucking block of code anyway. At this point I’m not gonna make any more progress by just sitting here staring at it.”

He thought Jared was just going to show him these exercises by doing them himself, but now he’s scooting his chair closer to Richard’s and holding out his hands expectantly, so Richard offers his wrists. Jared's hands are soft, and large enough to cover his as he manipulates them to press the palms together, moves them again to press together the backs. A college girlfriend had once joked that her small hands made his dick look bigger; under Jared's hands he'd -- no, what the fuck, why is he thinking about his dick right now?

He tries to clear his thoughts and focus back on the stretches Jared's teaching him. "So, uh, where did you learn how to do these?"

"Oh, they taught them to us at the workhouse," Jared replies, casually. Like there's nothing at all anachronistic about Jared having lived like some Victorian pauper in exchange for his manual labor. "For as hard as they worked us, they really seemed concerned that we not get injuries. Though I suppose that could just be because we wouldn't have been able to work as efficiently..." he trails off, a thoughtful look on his face.

Jared's fucked-up, Charles Dickens nightmare childhood aside, Richard's grateful for being taught the exercises. Really, how long had he been programming without knowing these? It seemed like the kind of thing they should have taught in CS 101 -- which he _had_ taken, along with a handful of other computer classes and way too many fucking useless literature courses. He was trying to engineer what Pied Piper had become, something that would change the world, not, fucking, identify with some Japanese noblewoman who had enough time to keep a diary about her petty problems, and, and, analyze how many fucking syllables she put into her poems -- anyway. Maybe those workhouse proprietors were on to something after all.

Oh. Jared seems to be done demonstrating for him, but his hands are still on Richard's. Strangely, it feels really nice, firmer than when he delicately holds Richard's hands to buff his nails. He doesn't want him to let go. Or maybe it's Jared who doesn't want to let go? Ah, he's moving his thumbs down now to massage at Richard's wrists. Maybe that was his plan the whole time. Fuck, he's overthinking this.

Fuck fuck. He's just realized how intimate this looks. It's so easy to forget how Jared's sensuality sneaks up on him when they're alone without an audience, to put it aside, put it on the back burner in his mind, but now he's bracing himself for the stream of shit the two of them are about to get from Dinesh and Gilfoyle.

Right on cue -- god, Richard had _actually literally winced_ at the thought, maybe if he wasn't such a fucking spaz they wouldn't have even noticed, but now here they are, holding hands in the middle of the fucking workspace with two casually homophobic onlookers -- Gilfoyle addresses Dinesh.

"Hey, Dinesh, do you want to learn some useful exercises too?"

"Oh, yeah, these seem really important for avoiding injuries, so maybe we should."

“Here, how about this one?” Gilfoyle spins around and hikes one leg up, wrapping his arm around it to pull it back further, ass sliding forward in his chair. “It’s called “easy access,” and it’s useful for avoiding anal tears while on the job.”

“Oh, is it, like this?” Dinesh gets out of his chair fully, and turns around to seat one knee in it, leaning forward and arching his back. “Am I doing it right? I’m not sure, maybe you should come help me.”

Richard pointedly ignores them, and decides it would be best to wish Jared a good night and leave Gilfoyle and Dinesh to their grab-assing. It's not like he’d be able to get any proper coding done at this point anyway, between the late hour and the slap-happy housemates.

In bed, he thinks again of Jared's hands, how they covered his own, how they'd cover his -- his dick, he allows himself to think this time. He snakes an arm under his comforter and into his pants and takes himself, still soft, in his own hand to try to compare.

But what would be the use of being in Jared's hands if he's soft? No, the, the rational thing to do here is to make the comparison while he's hard. Actually, it seems that he's well on his way already. With a few good flicks of his wrist he's fully aroused, and now he can appropriately consider the size difference there would be if Jared were here.

... Yep. Jared's hands sure are bigger than his. Well, that was useful.

God, what is he doing here? Whether it's Jared's hands or his own, now he's just horny and he needs to get off. He grabs his phone, still on the charger, and scrolls through some porn video thumbnails, but none particularly catch his eye so he just jerks off to the goofy, sped-up superstimuli of the ads that flank the page.

In the morning, Jared's nowhere to be found. Richard hunts him down in the garage, where Jared explains that he’s feeling under the weather, and that he decided not to work in the shared workspace today just in case it’s contagious.

“I thought I sent out the memo --” A few clicks at his laptop -- “Oh, what do you know, it’s still in my drafts. Silly. I’m sorry you and the rest of the team weren’t notified, but I should still be able to perform my tasks dutifully if I move my agenda around a bit. I wasn’t going to be part of the engineering meeting scheduled for today anyway. Still, I hope it won’t be too much of an inconvenience to you that I’m further from reach. But there’s always Slack and email, and of course I’m right here down the hall if you need me in person.”

“No, man, that’s fine. Feel better.”

Around lunchtime, Richard decides he’ll bring Jared some orange juice. Hah, OJ for OJ. Actually -- this was just one among many things that went on in his head which he would never tell the other guys but -- he, too, had secretly changed OJ to Original Jared in his mind. And soup would be good too. Vegetarian chicken noodle soup. Wait, is Jared vegan or vegetarian? He checks the label and finds no animal products listed, which is good enough for him. Anything vegan would also be vegetarian. It's like. Squares and rectangles.

When he brings the meal, Jared's looking even more pale and attenuated than usual, but he's still doing his best to keep up his work even through the sickness.

“Hey, Jared. I brought this for you. Um, it’s hot, so. Maybe -- I should set it -- here?” He approaches Jared’s makeshift desk of armchair and side table and sets the items precariously on a bit of empty space. “Hey, you’re sure you feel ok enough to work? You look like shit.”

Jared shakes his head blearily as if awakening from a daze. “Oh, Richard, that’s too terribly kind of you. I’m afraid I’m running an awfully hot fever, and my thoughts are running all amok.”

He grabs for Richard’s hand, which he brings to his forehead so Richard can confirm this diagnosis by touch. He’s right, the contact of flesh-on-flesh is hot. 

“Oh, but there’s still so much work to be done to rear our child, Richard, for the company to develop and grow in a rich, nurturing environment.”

"Seriously, man, I think you really should take the rest of the day off. I promise we'll get by just fine while you get better. That's what those vacation hours are there for, right?" He tries. He moves his hand from under Jared’s and down into something of a caress, which he hopes is comforting but is probably just incredibly awkward, him standing with Jared still seated.

"Well, technically no one here is accruing paid time off until we get the payroll accounts fixed… shoot, I still need to return that call to Melinda at ADP… anyway, I certainly don’t intend malingering, Richard."

"God, just, forget the PTO or the sick leave or whatever, as your CEO and captain I am designating to you the duty of eating this meal, resting, and feeling better," Richard says with a note of finality. He takes his hand away and returns to his own work.

All told, the day goes rather smoothly, aside from a couple wrinkles Jared would have been better suited for ironing out.

Actually, one such issue has got him quite heated up, a lengthy email written in legalese that came in three hours ago; one of which was spent trying to decipher it, the other two of which were spent impatiently waiting for Jared to read it for him, compulsively refreshing his inbox even though he _knew_ that the reply email would appear on its own as soon as it was sent. He can’t calm down the anxiety induced by the harsh wording, or the annoyance at waiting for Jared’s response, and in a burst of irritable restlessness he heads to the garage.

When he opens the door he finds Jared again with healthy complexion, serene, sitting cross-legged on the cot knitting a large afghan one colorful square at a time. He works with practiced, mechanical ease pulling one loop through the next, occasionally glancing over to reference the instructions pulled up on his laptop. He's also got a pair of earbuds in -- probably listening to some NPR talkshow -- regardless, he hasn't noticed Richard.

Richard just, he just can't break that tranquility, and he calms down from his fuming, fitful mode and into troubleshooting mode. Yeah, this isn't some, dense, incomprehensible document, it's a buggy block of code. And if he can just see what the code is _getting at_ , he can decipher it and solve the problem.

… Nope, it’s still a giant, wordy mess. But, now that he’s cooled down, maybe the two of them will be able to puzzle through it together. He moves further into the garage, laptop in hand, and Jared finally reacts to his presence, pulling out his headphones and setting his work aside, allowing space for Richard to sit beside him. Richard explains the issue to Jared, who leans over to read the email on Richard’s computer.

Jared touches the laptop screen as he explains the difficult verbiage. If it were anyone else Richard would go into a hissy fit, but now all he can focus on is the way Jared’s pressed close against him, talking him through how he’ll solve tonight’s crisis. When they reach the end of the document, Richard thanks him, and remarks that it’s a good thing Jared was able to recover from his earlier sickness.

“Yes, I think the day off was just what I needed. It was really nice to spend some time working on a personal project, but my true love is Pied Piper, and I’ll be back to full steam for us by tomorrow.”

Richard’s feeling deeply prideful, having helped Jared feel better. That pride, though, he notices, also has an undercurrent of jealous possessiveness -- Jared is _his_ , he got better because of _him_.

* * *

“Send me that,” Gilfoyle had said, earlier in this room when Dinesh had captured him and Jared in a compromising position on his camera roll.

They seem to be getting into an awful lot of those lately. His new office is actually more narrow than it had seemed, and the tension had been building all day, Jared and Richard touching each others’ waists and hips as they maneuvered around one another setting up the workspace. Now they’re the only ones left here, preparing documents to be passed out tomorrow. 

Richard -- Richard’s not an idiot, ok? He can see what he does to Jared, he fucking _revels_ in flaunting it. Daring Jared’s touches to become gropes. He knows who Jared’s thirsty for, who he’s gagging for.

He’s finally got him pressing Richard onto the desk, Richard winding his arms around Jared’s shoulders as his legs pull Jared against his crotch, but it’s Jared who, in the end, captures Richard’s mouth in a deep kiss.

Jared’s lips taste like… like plain chapstick. It’s honestly… kind of gross? Waxy and without flavor. But then Jared’s moving down to his neck, fingering open the buttons of his shirt. When he reaches the bottom, he moves down to open Richard’s pants, which Richard awkwardly shuffles out of from his position atop his desk. After shucking his underwear, but before tossing the garments carelessly aside, he digs out a condom from his pocket.

When he offers it to Jared, he notices that the expiration date printed on the foil has passed.

“Who cares?” Richard answers when Jared points this out to him. “I mean, it’s not like we could get pregnant.”

" _Richard_ ," Jared says in that certain tone of voice. Not admonishing, but. Motherly. As fucked up as that is in their current situation. "That simply won't do. It would be an unsafe sexual practice. Such things can have dangerous consequences, you know. But, lucky for us, I also have one which I’m confident is still within its window of safe use.”

Jared disappears for a brief moment, returning with both a non-expired condom and a small packet of lube. Jesus, does he just keep those things in his satchel? In his desk? Well, maybe it’s no more strange than Richard carrying a condom around. Jared, at least, has been known to regularly get laid.

Before he gets the lube fully open, Richard opens his big fucking mouth making Jared pause in the task.

"Jared, can I... confess something to you?"

Jared, of course, splays his hand upon his chest and answers, "Anything, Richard."

"I'm like... really fucking nervous, ok? This isn't something I've done before. With a man, or. One time I got shitfaced and asked a girl to peg me, but she of course didn't have her equipment at the party, and in the morning when she had sobered up... well... you know how that goes," he ends, lamely, with a bitter, brittle laugh.

Jared nods in understanding. "Thank you for confiding that. If you feel nervous, just remember that it's me, ok? I only want you to feel good. I only want to make you happy, Richard."

He gets his fingers coated in lube and reaches down to press between Richard’s legs, into the cleft of his ass, into his, his actual fucking asshole.

"How does that feel?"

Richard sucks in a breath. He respects Jared too much to give him anything other than an honest answer. "I don't know."

"Does it feel good?" Jared's started moving his fingers, a slow, steady, in-and-out. Well, it sure doesn't feel _bad_. It's slick, and he can feel the shape of his insides gripping around Jared. He's still tight, but he finds himself loosening up as Jared works further inside, deeper to his knuckles.

"Yeah. Yeah, it feels good."

Jared smiles at this, a genuine, bright smile. "Richard, I'm so glad you like it."

Now he leans further over Richard, bracing himself with one hand on the desk to the side and adjusting the angle of the other, still stretching Richard, to crook his fingers up in a deliberate search. It's clear when he's found what he's looking for, because Richard can only let his mouth fall open dumbly, looking up at Jared as he's struck by the powerful sensation.

Finally Jared pulls out his fingers, making Richard hump at thin air in his absence.

"My goodness, such a _needy_ slut."

He whines aloud at this, and Jared stops in his tracks.

"Oh, Richard, I'm so sorry, I should have asked before calling you names."

Richard shakes his head vehemently, "No, no, I like it. Keep doing it," he encourages.

"Gosh, I suppose you really do need it bad, don't you? My own little slut."

Jesus, where is he getting these lines? There's no way Richard can keep up with the dirty banter, so he just lies back and takes it.

"Oh, your hole is just begging for it. A dripping wet whore. Ready to take this cock inside? Take my cock like a good slut, a good boy?" Jared's got his dick covered in latex and lube, and Richard's coming apart, coming apart at the seams as it presses against him. He nods desperately and rotates his hips further up from the desktop.

Jared works slowly inside, at a mostly consistent pace -- though Richard has to stop him entirely more than once while he adjusts to the feeling of being filled, deeper and deeper. Once he’s gotten fully seated, he speeds up his thrusts and moves to thumb a nipple, twists and fondles it.

“You like that.”

It’s not a question, but Richard moans, “mm-hm.”

Jared lowers his hand to where he’s now squeezing the last of the lube packet on his cock, and lets the lube coat his fingers even as it eases the friction where they’re joined. 

He jerks Richard off in a slick slide, strokes matching the pace of their sex, and soon Richard’s spilling in his hand.

With a low groan and a hand through Richard’s curls, Jared’s coming too. In a moment of inspiration, Richard swipes two fingers through the wetness on his stomach and shoves them into Jared’s mouth, which Jared, in that dutiful, obedient, passive way of his, accepts just as gracefully and gratefully as anything.

They’ve really made a mess of his new desk, but. Whatever. The scattered papers and chaos kind of make him feel at home.


End file.
